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I had exams at 11, 14 and 18 - No big deal there, it is a great learning occasion. Those who follow professionalizing schools get an additional exam at 16... No brain damage has ever occurred from an exam.

But school systems receive government subsidies based on how the students perform on the standardized exams, which means teachers are compelled to "teach to the exam", which means students aren't getting the more comprehensive educations they used to get.

The intent was sound (making sure students are getting "appropriate" level of instruction), but the schools systems are gaming that intent to get more money.

".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010-----You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010-----When you pry the gun from my cold dead hands, be careful - the barrel will be very hot. - JSOP, 2013

This is the situation now in Italy with the INVALSI tests. When I went to school the system was different, there is and always has been a ministerial teaching program with mandatory and optional topics year per year.

The tests were ministerial but tailored to each class, so that if for reasons some part of the program were not touched they were not asked in the exam. There was no graduatory, only a grade (the grade system changed too many times to be worthy of mention, usually 5 votes with 1 not-pass and 4 passes).

In my opinion they were great experiences: subject kids to stress, have them work hard for something and then they pass. It teaches stress and time management from an early age.

The UK SATS are beyond a joke - asking young kids about stupidly obtuse grammatical points and assuming that their mystified guesses somehow represent the quality of their schools.

Do you actually know what a modal verb is? I sure as hell don't and when various Ministers of Education have been asked similar questions, they haven't known the answers either. Somehow, though, a kid in Year 6 is deemed to be a failure for not guessing correctly (and by extension, his teacher is deemed a failure, too).

I increasingly imagine the Ministry to be run by a dysfunctional Dalek that constantly screams "MATRICULATE! MAT-RIC-U-LAAAAATE!"

Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect. - Mark Twain

But now the compiler warns that the second argument could be null, and the parameter is meant to be non-null.

That's the point you lost me... How it comes?
And if it does warn in C# 8 than we have a big problem because the code (without the ! operator) compiles with no problem (as it should) in C# 7... (and that because the public Delivery(Person recipient, Address address) method has no problem whatsoever to receive null in every parameter you choose)

"The only place where Success comes before Work is in the dictionary." Vidal Sassoon, 1928 - 2012

Researchers have developed a simple and highly novel form of computing by shining patterned bands of light and shadow through different facets of a polymer cube and reading the combined results that emerge.

Researchers have developed a simple and highly novel form of computing by shining patterned bands of light and shadow through different facets of a polymer cube and reading the combined results that emerge.

What's the big deal? I've heard people were doing this back in the '60s with LSD.

The Windows Sandbox is a Windows 10 virtual machine that can be quickly launched so you can test downloaded programs,browsers extensions, and suspect sites without risk of infecting your normal Windows operating system.

Update: The sandbox is such a basic version of winio that it includes almost none of the cr@p that makes it the garbage that it is, so users have opted en masse to use it all the time, instead of the Best! Windows! Evah!